Overture
The Universe as a set of harmonic oscillators
Lagrangians
Simple harmonic oscillators
Occupation number representation
Making second quantization work
Writing down Lagrangians
Continuous systems
A first stab at relativistic quantum mechanics
Examples of Lagrangians, or how to write down a theory
III. The need for quantum fields
The passage of time
Quantum mechanical transformations
Symmetry
Canonical quantization of fields
Examples of canonical quantization
Fields with many components and massive electromagnetism
Gauge fields and gauge theory
Discrete transformations
Propagators and perturbations
Ways of doing quantum mechanics: propagators and Green’s functions
Propagators and Fields
The S-matrix
Expanding the S-matrix: Feynman diagrams
Scattering theory
Interlude: wisdom from statistical physics
Statistical physics: a crash course
The generating functional for fields
Path Integrals
Path Integrals: I said to him, “You’re crazy”
Field Integrals
Statistical field theory
Broken symmetry
Coherent states
Grassmann numbers: coherent states and the path integral for fermions
VII. Topological ideas
Topological objects
Topological field theory
VIII. Renormalization: taming the infinite
Renormalization, quasiparticles and the Fermi surface
Renormalization: the problem and its solution
Renormalization in action: propagators and Feynman diagrams
The renormalization group
Ferromagnetism: a renormalization group tutorial
Putting a spin on QFT
The Dirac equation
How to transform a spinor
The quantum Dirac field
A rough guide to quantum electrodynamics
QED scattering: three famous cross sections
The renormalization of QED and two great results
Some applications from the world of condensed matter
Superfluids
The many-body problem and the metal
Superconductors
The fractional quantum Hall fluid
Some applications from the world of particle physics
Non-abelian gauge theory
The Weinberg-Salam model
Majorana fermions
Magnetic monopoles
Instantons, tunnelling and the end of the world
Appendix A. Further reading
Appendix B. Useful complex analysis